Charlie Hebdo Is Heroic and Racist
http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/politics/2015/01/charlie_hebdo_the_french_satirical_magazine_is_heroic_it_is_also_racist.html
At a memorial in New York City’s Union Square, a Charlie Hebdo cover that reads “Love is stronger than hate.”
The editors and cartoonists murdered in yesterday’s attack on French magazine Charlie Hebdo are now martyrs for the cause of free speech. Threatened with death for publishing drawings of the prophet Mohammed meant to mock Islamic radicals, they refused to censor themselves, and so were gunned down. They died bravely for an ideal we all treasure.
But their work featuring Mohammed could be sophomoric and racist. Not all of it; a cover image of the prophet about to be beheaded by a witless ISIS thug was trenchant commentary on how little Islamic radicalism has to do with the religion itself. But often, the cartoonists simply rendered Islam’s founder as a hook-nosed wretch straight out of Edward Said’s nightmares, seemingly for no purpose beyond antagonizing Muslims who, rightly or wrongly, believe that depicting Mohammed at all is blasphemous.
This, in a country where Muslims are a poor and harassed minority, maligned by a growing nationalist movement that has used liberal values like secularism and free speech to cloak garden-variety xenophobia. France is the place, remember, where the concept of free expression has failed to stop politicians from banning headscarves and burqas. Charlie Hebdo may claim to be a satirical, equal-opportunity offender. But there’s good reason critics have compared it to “a white power mag.” As Jacob Canfield wrote in an eloquent post at the Hooded Utilitarian, “White men punching down is not a recipe for good satire.”
So Charlie Hebdo’s work was both courageous and often vile. We should be able to keep both of these realities in our minds at once, but it seems like we can’t.
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They're judging the cartoons from their own perspective, not the French perspective. I've explained a couple on other threads but nobody appears to want to change their minds about them.
Its also demonstrating a disappointing lack of knowledge about global affairs...
I keep trying to break through the DU truism (that's now grown calcified) that the cartoons are racist but its a minority position. And I'm not on here enough to change anything.
Alas.
But props to you for trying!
Pissing in the wind, probably. 
http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1002&pid=6072598
Last edited Sun Jan 11, 2015, 05:11 PM - Edit history (2)
Which among other things enshrines "Laicité" meaning that, because of the bloody wars of religion between Catholics and Protestants during their history, the Republic created after the 1789 French Revolution codified into the government the principle of "Laicité". Citizens may practice whatever religion they choose, but obvious displays of religious appearance are blocked from the public sphere - meaning if you work in the government, you can't show obvious signs of your religious affiliation while at work.
So a public schoolteacher cannot wear a cross or a star of David while exercising her duties, and a schoolchild profiting from her free public education cannot wear a Muslim head scarf WHILE AT SCHOOL.
The Burka is illegal because, in France, women MUST SHOW their faces, because of the principal of "Egalité". There is no equality in a society where some female citizens must cover their faces and bodies due to Sharia law, based on the belief that women are such provocative creatures, they must be hidden from view.
The burka therefore cannot be allowed anywhere, if the society is to function according to the Republic. The French Burka law was challenged in the EU courts and was held up. In France and in the EU, the right of the society to function in accord with its principals outweighs the individual's right to do whatever the hell they want. Unlike in the USA.
France isn't an American colony, and they don't need to follow American ideals about how the world should work. France doesn't need to follow Sharia Law, or allow Muslim women to wear Burkas. This is neither "rascist" nor "harassment". The French are a FREE people who have the right to preserve their Republic. Much blood was spilled for them to earn it.
The ignorance shown by the author of this newspaper article just eats me up. I've had it with the "Poor French Muslims" angle I've been seeing everywhere in the USA press. 
Everything about France that the American press has been slagging since this tragedy occurred has very clear historical reasons for being so.
However American "journalists" go about throwing around the "racism" meme and the "harassment of the poor French Muslims" meme without bothering to try and figure out why a sovereign foreign country, only about 1,500 years older than the USA, has a different idea about how to do things.
